Home >>Assessment >> Optional Extra Credit Report

Optional Extra Credit Report

Students may boost their final grade by preparing a detailed report based on one of the assignments.  

Important note:  In order for the extra-credt report to to make a difference, your provisional grade needs to be within 3 percentage points of the next highest cutoff. The report will be taken as extra evidence about your true ability.  So if you are aiming to improve your grade up to a B level, then the report would need to be a B level report (at least).

There is no penalty for not submitting an extra credit report. A grade will be assigned on the basis of the tests, the final, and the assignments. That is the grade you will receive if you don't submit a report. It is also the grade you will receive if you submit a report, but it is not up to the required standard.

Deadline:  Extra credit reports should be handed in by the Final Exam.

Form of the Report:

    This report should be based on standard American Psychological Association (APA) format, and a summary of what should be included is given below.  You can find a suitable model for the report by looking at papers published in journals such as the Journal of Experimental Psychology (several versions available).

    You need to provide some background for the experiment (consult the references on reserve), and the data you present should be based on the class data handed out in class.

Guidelines for Report

The extra-credit report should be a formal research paper discussing one of the experiments we conducted as an assignment this semester. Further references for any one of these experiments is on reserve in the main library. This report is due on the day of the Final Exam.

The following is a general outline of the sections that should be included and the order in which they should be presented:

Introduction

In this section you should introduce existing findings and theoretical ideas that are directly relevant to your study. This is where you would want to include findings from the article relevant to your experiment on reserve in the library. Avoid the temptation to include information that is only loosely related to your study. Outline the precise problem you chose to investigate (i.e. does coloring only one letter of a word reduce the Stroop effect?) and describe the way you went about testing it.

Method

The main goal of this section is to provide a thorough description of what was done and what was used so that anyone could replicate this experiment. This section consists of sub-sections which should include:

Participants - In this section you should describe the relevant features of the people who participated in the experiment. In some experiments, it would be relevant to provide a detailed description of your subject pool (i.e. are they native English speakers?, age, educational level etc.).

Materials - In this section you want to describe the items/stimuli you used in enough detail that anyone can re-create them. If you used words, then you need to list the properties of the words that were relevant to the experiment. You may want to give examples of the types of items you used if it would be helpful. You also need to describe the type of apparatus/equipment you used to present the items/stimuli. Sometimes, you may also want to include the setting in which the experiment was conducted (i.e. sound-proof booth).

Design - In this section you should describe the formal design features of the experiment you ran, using the appropriate terminology (independent variable, dependent variable, within subject design, etc). What was being manipulated (i.e. type of words) and what was the measure (i.e. RT, error rate).

Procedure - This section should describe a step-by-step procedure that you used from start to finish of the experiment. This would include the instruction you gave the subject prior to the experiment (what the task is), what each trial consisted of in terms of the sequence of events that the subject saw, (i.e. Subject pressed a foot pedal to begin. A fixation cross appeared in the center of the screen for 500 ms. etc.), what type of response the subject was required to make, and what if any post-experimental questions were asked etc.

Results

In this section you should present a summary of the class data and the results of the statistical analysis. 

Discussion

Now that the results have been analyzed, they must be interpreted. What is the likeliest explanation for the finding you obtained and what are the implications of your findings? A good idea is to start out by summarizing the findings of the study. For example, you may want to state that naming times for the list with a single-letter colored were no different than responses to the control list. Then you want to discuss what the implications of these results may be, including whether they were consistent with your predictions. If they were not, then how would you account for why you didn't get the results you predicted, offer some alternative explanation. Finally, you want to discuss the implications of the findings in terms of the theories/results you discussed in the introduction. Is your finding consistent with what has been previously reported or does it refute any theories presented in the introduction and if so, how?

References

Include here a list of the articles that you have actually used in preparing the report.

Citing journal articles:

Author's last name; author's first initial; date of publication (in parenthesis); title of article; journal title (underlined or italicized); journal volume (bold); inclusive page numbers.

Brown, A. and Green, A. (1974). The effects of locus of control on attributions for performance outcomes among junior high school pupils, The Journal of Tedious Research, 52,  317-324.

Citing articles in books:

Author's last name; author's first initial; date of publication (in parenthesis); title of article; initials of editor's first name; editor's last name; date of publication of book (if different); title of book (underlined or italicized); place of publication; name of publisher.

Argle, T. and Socks, M. (1972). Odoriferous phalanges. In M. Gray (Ed.), If it had teeth: 15 years of research into non-verbal communication. New York: Nonacademic Press.